Appendix: Janet and psychic energy

The psychological analysis of Pierre Janet described a system of psychic energies held in
tension between hierarchies of mental activity. At the bottom of the tree, psychic energy
was confined to the expression of reflexive tendencies like attraction, repulsion,
incorporation or excretion. These actions might be simple or more complex, but the
energy would be used until the chain of events was complete, and therefore not available
for other modes of functioning. He describes epileptic seizure as a regressive return to
this level of activity. The next stage of functioning, perceptive-suspensive, requires the
ability to suspend action during a chain of events, suggesting a basic capacity to play a
game, even if that game is the game of life itself. At the social level of functioning, two
channels of action become apparent; the diversion of energy towards others in the social
group, and its diversion towards one's own body. Janet also observed close interactions
between the two systems, and saw them as having a strong effect on the emotional life of
the individual. His observations have been borne out by attachment theory and still more
recent neurobiological understanding of the relational basis of brain development and
affect regulation. The 'middle' functions occupied a great deal of Janet's attention,
especially the level he termed 'elementary intellectual tendencies'. This stage is concerned
with double signals (often of form and function) contained in things, but also in the
capacity to represent things in language. The capacity both to participate and to observe
is important at this stage of psychic organisation, and to switch between the two.
Moreno's work on psychodrama can be seen as a journey to recover this capacity, as the
tension between observatory and participatory modes gets harder to hold as mental
functioning becomes 'higher'; that is, more rational and objective. The first level of Janet's
higher functionings describes further complexities, as the ability of language to detach
itself from the world is experienced. One of the characteristics of this stage is the ability,
as Tolkien would say, to say 'green sun'. Janet calls this inconsistent language. He shows
how language exacerbates the difference between the individual's experience of
themselves and their interaction with the world. He also describes a difference between
the ease of saying something ('talk is cheap'), and the act of affirming it to oneself, or in
bringing it to action in the world. This stage is called 'immediate actions and assertive
beliefs' and is linked closely to the development of will and thought. It is also the point at
which psychological life exists through persona roles and projections onto others, in
Jungian terms. The rational-ergetic stage is the level where the human world becomes
truly separate from the animal, with organisational structures and logic which are carried
through often for no other reason than that they exist. Real world experience is
reintegrated with the emergence of scientific enquiry at the next, 'experimental', stage,
while the best a human being can be begins with the emergence of a reflective capacity.
At this level, many of the themes of the earlier levels are recapitulated, like the ability to
stand more than one viewpoint. Except that, this time, different levels of psychological
reality are held in tension and synthesised. He describes the 'complete real' the synthesis
of which requires the affirmation, through reflection, of the existence of corporeal and
non-corporeal bodies. The former are endowed with material form; the latter with
intentionality. In the 'almost real' mode, the individual is making use of a sensitive
feedback mechanism, in a state of constant adaptation. Janet calls this process 'self-
reporting'. And in the 'semi-real', abstract ideas, fantasies, recent memory and predictions
for the near future are brought into play. This most complex stage of psychological
development Janet called 'progressive tendencies', and linked it to the refinement of
consciousness.

Janet saw psychological problems in terms of the individual's ability both to draw upon a
supply of psychic energy, and to maintain it at levels of ever-increasing complexity,
without losing the force necessary to contain the raw energy, or without the supply being
insufficient to stay at the level already achieved. He describes an evolutionary, bottom-up
and adaptive process of ever-increasing complexity, which is open-ended and sensitive to
its environment. Janet also emphasised the dissociative capacity of a psyche in which the
supply of energy was out of keeping with the level of tension needed to give it form.
Many of his themes were taken up by Jung, who developed them further throughout his
long elaboration of the principle of the tension of opposites. They would be recognisable
to many who work with notions of complex, emergent and ecological systems across a
number of disciplines today.